Ryan plan puts elderly vote in play

Democrats still smarting from their 2010 mid-term defeat see Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s controversial plan to overhaul Medicare as political aspirin, a cure for just about everything that ails them.

But for Barack Obama it’s more like Geritol — a targeted treatment for his chronic aches and pains with older voters.

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Obama’s 2008 campaign was fueled by youthful enthusiasm and billed as a generational upheaval. But older voters, especially white working-class conservatives, were not a natural hope-and-change crowd, and he lost among seniors by nine points to John McCain. Many of them simply stayed home.

That skepticism, bordering on hostility, has carried over to his presidency.

Over-65 voters have given Obama the lowest marks of any age cohort in every weekly Gallup presidential approval survey taken since Obama took office. Last week, only 36 percent of seniors approved of his performance, seven points less than Obama’s overall approval rating and 12 points lower than his positive rating among 18-to-24 year-olds.

But Ryan’s plan, embraced by most Republicans, gives Obama a big opportunity in 2012 to regain lost ground in key battleground states and narrow the generation gap. “It finally gives us an argument to make with seniors… It’s a godsend,” said a Democratic operative allied with Obama who sees the issue as a way to make up lost ground with seniors in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Florida. (See also: John Boehner says he’s not 'wedded to' Paul Ryan plan)

Moreover, some of Obama’s advisers think the anti-Ryan campaign could be especially effective against Republican Mitt Romney, a possible Obama opponent who has pronounced himself on the “same page” with the budget committee chairman from Wisconsin.

“This could be a real Romney killer,” added the person.

Ryan’s proposal, passed hastily by House Republicans to cement their budget cutting bona fides, would replace the widely popular public health care plan for seniors with private vouchers. The plan wouldn’t impact anyone currently over 55, but Ryan and other Republicans have faced raucous protests back in their home districts this week.

“The elderly more than almost any other age group are very, very sensitive to entitlement programs,” said Paul Beck, a presidential scholar at Ohio State University.

Since its beginnings in the 1960’s, Beck added, Medicare “said to elderly Americans: ‘You are not going to have to suffer the risk of a catastrophic illness.’ (See also: Overflow crowds for Paul Ryan town halls)

“What the Republicans in some ways are saying is, ‘Our plan, the Ryan plan, returns that risk.’”

For Democrats burned by home district health care protests two summers ago – and torched by the GOP over Medicare last fall – the turnabout is delightful. The Democratic wipeout in the midterms owed much to Republican claims that Obama’s health reform law would slash $500 billion from Medicare over the next decade. And Obama’s advisers have been concerned that 2010 could spill over into next year’s campaign, exacerbating his pre-existing disadvantages with a generation that liked Ike, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.